Event

Circus Now! with Duncan Wall - "The Ordinary Acrobat"

***UPDATE: Online ticket sales have ended, but you may still purchase additional tickets tonight at the door. Doors will open at 6:30pm.***

Enjoy performances and learn about contemporary circus in this Circus Now! event with Duncan Wall, author of "The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wonderful World of the Circus, Past and Present." The evening will include performances, audio and visual presentations, and a book signing.

Tickets are $5 to attend, and if you are interested in a copy of "The Ordinary Acrobat," we will apply that $5 toward the price of a book at the event.

"The Ordinary Acrobat" is an utterly charming account of Duncan Walls's novice plunge into the strange and wonderful world of contemporary circus, and a nostalgic look back at circus history and inside the current Cirque du Soleil-fueled phenomenon.

When Duncan Wall visited his first nouveau cirque as a college student in Paris, everything about it--the monochromatic costumes, the acrobats singing Simon and Garfunkel, the juggler reciting Proust--hooked him. Soon he was attending circuses two or three nights a week, and soon after that, he entered the intensively competitive training program at France's Ecole Nationale des Arts du Cirque. The Ordinary Acrobat is a magical, funny, sometimes scary story of what happens when one average American joins a host of gifted (and flexible) international students in a rigorous regimen of tumbling, trapeze, juggling, and clowning. This is an appealing, richly evocative history of how the circus evolved into the dynamic, thrilling experience it is today.

Discussion

Location

Mad Art Gallery(View)
2727 S. 12th St.
St. Louis, MO 63116
United States